Storylines from the Big 5 Classic: La Salle and St. Joe’s prevail, Penn falls in final

La Salle holds off Drexel in clash of John Beilein disciples

PHILADELPHIA – John Beilein was somewhere smiling watching Drexel and La Salle play in the Big 5 Classic’s Fifth-Place game.

20 plus years ago, Drexel head coach Zach Spiker was on Beilein’s staff at West Virginia, working as an administrative assistant, when Darris Nichols took his official visit. Nichols committed to the Mountaineers, scored 997 points in his career and finished as a top-five winningest player in West Virginia history when his college career was over.

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Fast forward two-plus decades to Saturday afternoon, and Spiker and Nichols are head coaches on opposite sidelines of each other, with Nichols’s La Salle Explorers holding on to a 69-64 win in the third edition of the Big 5’s new format.

The victory was Nichols’ first Big 5 win in one of college basketball’s most storied traditions, in his first season as the head coach of the Explorers. After spending four seasons as the head coach at Radford, Nichols’ hometown, he appreciated having someone like Spiker just across town to help him navigate his new job in a big city.

“Since I’ve been in Philadelphia he’s been really good for me,” Nichols said. “Helping me out, getting me to understand the city. He’s a guy that was a big reason why I went to West Virginia.”

La Salle’s win was a much needed one for the Explorers, who hadn’t beaten a Division-I opponent in nearly a month after a 73-60 victory against Monmouth back on Nov. 8.

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Injuries, turnovers, and the overall newness of a team with 16 new players has made for a difficult start, but that’s to be expected in today’s landscape of college basketball. With game reps and continuity, they’ll begin to gel. Saturday’s win was evidence of that.

Josiah Harris, who spent two seasons at Radford before following Nichols to La Salle, scored a career high 21 points and grabbed 13 rebounds for his second straight double-double.

Harris had struggled the…

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Publish date : 2025-12-07 17:06:00

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